100+ years ago, nobody had health insurance

Ice I agree, healthcare should be available to all. When healthcare is available to all, it improves all of our lives with lower levels of communicable disease. Universal healthcare makes society much safer for all. Regradless of how we get there, we have to get there. And we have to reduce healthcare costs. We cannot go on subdizing the weatlhy providers. They need to get down in the ditches with the rest of us and earn an honest living the old fashioned way...just like the rest of us. They need to ween themselves from the public teet.

It does bother me that they seem to think the public teet is ok for them but not for anyone else.

 

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Edit: Oh well, PJDude beat me to it...but at least I did furnish a citation, so I will leave my post...[/edit]

Actually you are mistaken. Health insurance did exist 100 years ago...in fact Germany implemented a kind of nationalized health insurance in 1885.

See here, stating:

 

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Look backwards any further, and you'd have your head up your own rectum.

 

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Look, nobody wants to get out what they put into medical insurance, because that would mean people wanted to get sick so they got their money's worth.

That would be absurd.

That said, what does it matter who pays in, and who benefits? It's insurance, therefore it's always at someone else's expense, insurance companies play odds, that not everyone will get sick who contributes, and this determines the level of cost to policy holders.

Right wingers draw the line at people paying tax to qualify, but why not discriminate on other factors? Like fat, overeaters? Smokers, people who won't jog or do exercise? Starts to sound unfair when they start to pry into lifestyle choices, so the only fair solution is ubiquitous healthcare.

Oh, and expecting more is called 'progress'. Healthcare is a mark of 'civilisation'.

 

There is nothing wrong with insurance.
Insurance is a good thing.

In most cases, the thing which you need to insure has a cost related to what you earn. So, if you are rich, you pay insurance on a million pound house, a one hundred thousand pound car.
If you are poor, you will be paying insurance on a small rented house, or a second hand car.

But as a human being you can't choose what you have.
If you are a poor person, you have the same body as a rich person.

If you have national health system, it forces people to pay for insurance.
The only difference is that you pay according to your ability to contribute,
otherwise poor people could never have access to good health care.

The USA not adopting such a policy is an anomaly.
And injust.

 

Please expand on this. What specific reforms would you suggest?

 

I have suggested these before in great detail so I am not very inclined to repeat myself. But here is a brief listing:

- Limit patent timeframes and rennewals (too much time, and money is spent by drug companies finding ways to extend patent protections versus developing new drugs)
- Open educational facilities to train more healthcare professionals
- Eliminate unnecessary and superfilous educational requirements (see how physicians are trainned in Europe, India, Australia, etc).
- Licensing needs to be focused on healthcare delivery and not on restricting the supply of physicians.

Artificial barriers to entry need to be eliminated. The problem with healthcare is supply. It is artifically restricted. In free markets if supply increases, prices decrease. This has not happened in the healthcare industy in the United States. Artificial restrictions on supply is why we have the most expensive and inefficient healthcare system in the world.

 

Ironically that's the exact same argument that right wingers use against "socialised medicine" - its horseshit of course, which is obvious to anyone who lives in the kind of civilised nation which has universal healthcare - or anyone from an uncivilised nation that doesn't have it and is at the mercy of an insurance company that hates paying out - but it's the kind of horseshit that your average uncritical righty just eats up.

 

Limit the time frame to what? A year? I think drug patents are only about 7 years already. Compare that to the lifetime patent for writers (I think it might even be lifetime plus 50 years!). A writer doesn't have to spend millions of dollars to get his drug approved. I'd say the patent for drugs should be the same as the copyright for books.

I'm not familiar with doctor training in other countries. But I really can't see how making the education easier would result in a higher level of care.

Nothing but generalizations there. You didn't even mention allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines, eliminating government mandates as to what must be covered under an insurance plan, or tort reform.

You say you've gone over this before, perhaps you did a better job there. Do you have a link to your previous post?

 

It would be nice if patent were only for seven years or less. But that is not the case. It is apparent you have not heard of patent term extensions.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/term/156.html

Notice how many drugs are listed with patent term extensions.

Drug companies often tweak their patent medication in order to obtain new patents. See the story of Nexium, how it was developed and marketed. Please see the story of project Shark Fin.

http://www.chelationtherapyonline.com/technical/p36.htm

Drug companies are spending more time and money managing their patents than they are developing new drugs. Drug companies, from a patient point of view, should be spending money on drug development and not on patent extensions. Patent extensions are critical to progress and commerce. After all a patent is a monopoly and directly affects the delivery of goods and services. A copywrite does not affect the economy in the same way as a patent...that is why the difference in protection periods.

Drug companies are very good at making minor alterations to the drug and getting patent extensions. Another example of this is Caduet...it combines to existing drugs that happen to be going off patent and yeilds a new patent and new protections.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17244


Not lets move on to your next point"

"But I really can't see how making the education easier would result in a higher level of care"

I didn't say make education easier. You said that. I said that medical education should be medical education. In other industrialized and non industrialized countries physicans enter medical school directly out of high school. Medical trainning is six years versus eight plus years in this country. That is two extra years of expense for no reason other than to create a barrier to entry into the profession. And in my experience with the physicians, the best come from overseas...that would be my preference each and every time.

And for you next point:
"You didn't even mention allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines, eliminating government mandates as to what must be covered under an insurance plan, or tort reform"

I didn't mention insurance or tort reform because they are red herrings used by the medical industry to deflect attention from the real issues in healthcare. The real isssues are barriers to entry into the healthcare professions. The real issues are that the number of physicians trainned annual is limited by the AMA at the state level and at the federal level. I have made several previous posts wtih respect to tort reform demonstrating that it really is a red herring.

Insurance is the only agency in the current system exercising cost restraint because of their bargaining power...a power that the small guy does not have.
"

 

Dude, recent surf trip abroad is a case in point. Mate got mashed up, his stick followed, and the fins bit him. He needed stitches in his palm. We arrived at the Public Hospital, showed his passport and EHIC card, paid an €8 excess, and he was stitched up an on his way in less than a hour.

How cool is that?

Similarly, the bill for my mashed leg when I was snowboarding came to £3000, (I think, I was reading upside down, converting Pesetas, and on strong pain meds at the time!) and thanks to a combination of insurance, and European healthcare, I only had to shell out £15 for a pair of crutches. ('cos I couldn't return them)

 

This thread is more about modern politics than history. Closed. Restart in an appropriate forum if you want to continue discussion. If any of the posts had substance or if the OP was remotely relevant, I would have just moved the thread. PM me if you have concerns.